Never mind the tsunami - it's playing Diana that terrifies me: Naomi Watts on the role more scary than any disaster movie

Naomi Watts says she let out a yelp of disbelief when she heard she was up for a coveted Golden Globe best actress award for her role as a true-life survivor of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Her nomination for The Impossible pitches her against some formidable competition, including two other British-born actresses, Helen Mirren (Hitchcock) and Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea).

Though Hollywood insiders say 43-year-old Naomi is the front runner, she will be on tenterhooks until the winners are announced on Sunday week.

Playing an icon: Naomi Watts, pictured left revealed she was terrified of playing Princess Diana, pictured right wearing the infamous back jacket and white trousers in the CCTV footage at The Ritz in Paris just hours before she died, in her new movie

Lookalike: Naomi Watts needed to wear four different wigs and have her eyebrows shaved in the middle to play Princess Diana

She is also being mooted as an Oscar nominee. The shortlist for the 2013 Academy Awards is due to be published next Thursday, and Reese Witherspoon is lobbying for Naomi to be included.

The nominations themselves are a vindication of what the actress calls ‘my struggle and determination’. Whether she takes home any trophies is almost irrelevant.

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Born in Kent, Naomi emigrated to Australia at 14. Her mother Myfanwy, an antiques dealer, split from her father Peter Watts, a sound engineer for Pink Floyd, when she was four. He died from a heroin overdose when she was seven.

‘I’ve known pain and sadness from a very early age,’ Naomi says.

In 1991, she landed a role in Home And Away as handicapped Julie Gibson, then spent the next ten years at the bottom of the Hollywood food chain. It wasn’t until 2001 that her stand-out role in Mulholland Drive brought her a taste of real success.

Until that happened, had she ever felt like giving up? ‘Every time I failed to land a part, I would think “I’m just not cut out for this, I can’t handle it — it’s too much rejection”. But each time I was about to give up, something would stop me.’

Best Actress: Naomi Watts may be nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Maria Hollande in The Impossible

Mother-and-son trauma: She was caked in mud and fake blood, and performed all of her own stunts for the harrowing role

So, did she feel she was ready for success when it happened?

‘Yes, it’s all about the preparation,’ she says. ‘It meant I never took anything for granted. The Australian culture has always been great for never letting you do that.

‘It instils in you a good work ethic, and a reverence for what you do. There is no sense of entitlement in Australian culture. It goes back to convict mentality. We are grateful; and yes, that was good preparation.’

Now she’s getting worldwide critical acclaim for her role in The Impossible. The movie veers from terrifying pain to chronicling intimate family grief, and Naomi plays it horrific and raw, with not a single flattering shot of her throughout. Her clothes are ripped, and she is bloody and caked in mud.

She is bashed, thrashed, dragged through slime, takes refuge in a tree for survival, almost drowns under the wave and coughs up disgusting black sludge as she is near death. But she somehow clings onto life in the hope of being reunited with her husband and three boys.

Diana reincarnated: Naomi Watts transformed into the late princess to shoot new scenes for the forthcoming royal biopic

Battle: The actress fought through a pack of paparazzi during adrenaline-fuelled scenes

The movie required months of tough
work, and Watts did all her own stunts. She shrugs off the physical
stress as ‘nothing’. ‘Yes, it was intense — lots of underwater filming
and climbing trees. I’m a tomboy at heart. I have an elder brother and
was never interested in girlie things, so climbing trees didn’t bother
me.

‘But being
underwater . . .’ she screws up her nose, as if it was slightly
irritating rather than both gruelling and even terrifying. (Naomi is
scared of water.)

Naomi has two sons, Sasha, five, and Samuel, four, with actor Liev Schreiber. Before that she had a passionate relationship with fellow Australian Heath Ledger, who, like her father, died of a drugs overdose.

She and Schreiber met at a party in 2006, when she was 36, just before she was about to shoot The Painted Veil. She recalls feeling suddenly bereft because she was going to be away for three months.

‘I tried to get out of the movie because I couldn’t bear to leave him. We were so in love.’ In the end, she persuaded Schreiber to take a role in the movie so they wouldn’t have such a long separation.

Lovers: Naomi Watts as Princess Diana and Naveen Andrews as heart surgeon Hasnat Khan in Caught In Flight. The movie concerns itself with the two-year, secretive relationship the princess had with him

In her newest movie, Caught In Flight,
she plays Princess Diana. There is a deep intake of breath when she
talks about it, and she looks for the first time a little overwhelmed.
Playing Diana is more overwhelming than a tsunami?

‘It’s high pressured. I tried to say no, then changed my mind. She led a fascinating life, and she’s a fascinating character. It was quite an undertaking. ’

Even though the film only covers the last couple of years of Princess Diana’s life, and her reported two-year affair with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, she uses four different wigs to change her hair length and colour quite considerably.

‘I also had to have my eyebrows shaved in the middle.’ This was to get her nose looking right.It’s not these small details that bother her, though: it’s tough playing an icon, and Naomi knows it will encourage comparisons. It’s already being said she’s not tall enough, or beautiful enough.

Tribute: Naomi Watts as Princess Diana. The actress hesitated about taking on the role at first

Dead ringer? Naomi Watts has acknowledged that she and the princess are not at all alike

She also worries that William and Harry will be upset by the film.

‘It took me some time to decide whether to do it. This is the most famous woman of our times.’

She learnt secrets about Diana that will only be revealed in the movie. But she also found ‘that Diana had a fantastic sense of humour and was a rebel’.

The attention that Watts has received since pictures of the film were released is, she says, a little bit scary’. She describes Diana as ‘complicated, strong, intelligent and vulnerable’ — attributes that could also describe Watts herself.

Glamorous: Naomi Watts certainly looks the part of a princess as she acts out scenes in a sequined dress